200 years of The Guardian
The Guardian was first published on 5th May 1821 and is marking the 200th anniversary with a facsimile of the first edition.
I’ve been reading the paper since the late 1960s and writing letters to it since the mid-1980s and as long as it continues (at least in print, although I mostly read e-editions) I plan to continue.
I haven’t yet seen but expect I will see pieces pointing out what a dreadful right-wing paper it is. Unhappy at best with Jeremy Corbyn, poor on South America, far too equivocal on trans rights. Definitely guilty on all counts I’d say but then the Guardian doesn’t pretend to be Socialist Worker or the Morning Star.
Historically it was a paper of the North (and in many ways I wish it still was) but for many years now its really been a paper of North London. I live there of course and I’m not complaining but I don’t really need a paper to tell me what people are thinking and doing there. Still..
Anyway if you are complaining that the Guardian is too right-wing or that its sold out you are missing the point both of its origins and what the paper was (and is) and also importantly of the strengths it has.
The paper came out of Peterloo but the legacy of that Manchester day was not straightforward. On the one side it led to Chartism and the early socialist movement. But on the other it was part of the precursor to what was (until the early 1980s) the modern Liberal Party (formed 1859). That tradition was that not of the 10 hour working day but of the Anti-Corn Law League. It was the tradition that saw the building of the Free Trade Hall (now a Radisson hotel) on the site of Peterloo.
As a tradition it had strengths. It was for peace and international conciliation, not war. It was against slavery (abroad, and the US Civil War was awkward). It was not for socialism.
As the twentieth century developed the two traditions existed side by side. The 100th anniversary of Peterloo in 1919 was celebrated in Manchester primarily by the Labour Party. J M Keynes was a Liberal whose economics did a good deal to inform Labour thinking.
When I first started reading it in the late 1960s the paper did support the Liberal Party. I don’t think one cared that much. The Liberals were electorally marginal and the paper employed some good to great journalists and columnists, none of whom from memory were Tories.(memory can be faulty though).
Matters became confused with the appearance of the SDP, which the paper also backed in the intertwining of Liberal and some Labour traditions.
It was never a paper of the left but in its pages one might find E P Thompson and Raymond Williams and others.
With the rise of the new Labour left in the 1980s (and given its strength in London- see above) the paper was perhaps associated to a degree with it. That didn’t I think influence editorial positions a great deal.
Once you can appreciate the origins and some of the traditions of the paper you can wish it happy birthday at 200 without complaining too much (but complaining is important too) about what it has never claimed to be.
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